


Copper and Tellurium

by zigostia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:27:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23853814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zigostia/pseuds/zigostia
Summary: “Dean and Maxwell. Anna and Tina. John and Sherlock.”John’s head, which had been steadily lolling lower and lower towards the desk, shot up as if electrocuted.(In which John and Sherlock have chemistry.)
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 27
Kudos: 122





	Copper and Tellurium

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Español available: [Cobre y Telurio](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25058704) by [PrinceBSlocked](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceBSlocked/pseuds/PrinceBSlocked)
  * Inspired by [i'll be H₂O if you're K](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23781019) by [bringmayflowers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bringmayflowers/pseuds/bringmayflowers). 



John absentmindedly doodled a few more flowers in the corner of his lab book, which was turning out to be quite the garden. In his defence, it wouldn’t be _nearly_ flourishing the way it was if Mrs. Darcy didn’t ramble on and on and on and _on._ As if they didn’t have everything she had to say memorized (which wasn’t an exaggeration—lunch-hour teacher complaints wouldn’t be complete without one of Mrs. Darcy’s students, past or current, reciting the infamous pre-lab speech completely verbatim). Honestly, you would think that, rather than Twelfth Year, they were _just_ twelve _—_ and not too bright at that—with the way she grilled them relentlessly about the importance of safety goggles and washing your hands and not chucking dangerous, corrosive chemicals at each other.

With a few short strokes of his pen, John added a tiny bee next to the flowers, and lazily tuned back into class as the monologue came to an end.

“Now, just because this is a formative lab does not mean you are permitted to fool around: remember, this is the formative to your lab _exam,_ worth fifteen percent of your mark.” Mrs. Darcy took the time to sweep her piercing grey gaze across the class of students. “Stations are first-come, first-serve. Chemicals are in the back and equipment is here at the front. I’ll be choosing your lab partners for this.” She raised the clipboard in her hands, and began to read. “Miriam and Tom. Trevor and Harry.”

John drummed his fingers on the desk, eager to hear the name of his partner. He wasn’t delusional enough to think she would pair him up with Mike (not after that one time with the sulphur; he still gagged whenever he smelled eggs). Maybe Sarah. Sarah was nice. Smart. Or maybe William. They worked well together.

“Dean and Maxwell. Anna and Tina. John and Sherlock.”

John’s head, which had been steadily lolling lower and lower towards the desk, shot up as if electrocuted. Mrs. Darcy, unbeknownst to John’s sudden and immediate shock, continued reading off names. Except John wasn’t listening anymore.

Sherlock. Sherlock Holmes? Sherlock _bloody_ Holmes?

Sherlock sat in the far right corner of the entire classroom, the one next to the window. He never raised his hand, but one time in September when Mrs. Darcy had called on him anyway, he had rattled off the right answer without missing a beat, and then followed that with the answers to the three extension questions she was going to ask after. He didn’t get called on often after that—not unless the professor knew no one else had the answer, and didn’t want to give the class the satisfaction of answering it herself. He didn’t talk much. He was, John suspected, the bearer of the highest mark in the class.

John sat in the far left corner of the classroom, next to the fume hood. It was just far enough to not be overly conspicuous, and just close enough that he could, every once in a while, casually send his gaze drifting to the right side of the classroom, subtle as can be, to catch glimpses of dark hair that tumbled in soft-looking curls over bright, piercing eyes that changed colour with the sun.

Right. Yeah. So maybe John had a little crush.

Okay—maybe a lot.

Fuck!

His inner turmoil was interrupted by a tap on his shoulder. He spun around, heart ratcheting, and caught sight of the exact set of dark hair and dazzling eyes that he had just been running himself in circles over.

“John,” Sherlock said, his voice so quiet and low it was nearly a purr. “We’re at station nine.”

“Oh,” John said stupidly. “Okay.”

Sherlock nodded. “I’ll fetch the equipment, you get the chemicals.”

“Okay,” John said again. Wow, he sure was making a phenomenal first impression. He blinked some more, and tore himself back to reality enough to say something that wasn’t ‘okay’. “I’m John, by the way. John Watson.”

A tiny little crease appeared on the bridge of Sherlock’s nose. “I know that.”

“Of course you do,” John said, internally punching himself. He gave Sherlock his best, most charming smile. “Anyway. Chemicals! I’ll, um, I’ll just go do that right now.” He stood up so quickly he nearly knocked his water bottle off his desk, and only managed to catch it with his amped-up reflexes (god bless rugby), and dashed away before he could open his mouth again and make any more of an arse of himself.

Face turned away from Sherlock as he made his way to the back of the room where the chemicals were located, John took a deep breath and dragged a hand over his face. Jesus, he needed to get a hold of himself. He hadn’t thought it had gotten _that_ bad.

Tiny squeeze bottles of acid, base, and phenolphthalein in hand, he made his way towards station nine, where Sherlock was already situated. He had already seemed to have washed everything with dish soap, and was setting up the burette.

“Hey,” John said, and dropped the bottles unceremoniously on the counter.

Sherlock glanced at him, and then pointed at a pair of lab goggles that John just noticed were lying on the counter. “You forgot your lab goggles,” he said.

“Oh, shit,” John said. “I mean, uh—oops.” Embarrassed, he grabbed the goggles and put them on. “Thanks for grabbing me a pair.”

“No problem.” Sherlock’s voice was even, cool, calm, collected. He had already finished setting up the burette, and now moved on to measuring the acid for the beaker. John felt a flash of envy. It wasn’t like John wasn’t smart, in fact he was pretty decent at labs, but he was just… distracted _._ Terribly, terribly distracted. At this rate, he’d be lucky to not accidentally pour the acid all over his hand in a daze.

Luckily, Sherlock handled the acid. He handed John the bottle that read _Sodium Carbonate._ “Pour fifty millilitres of that through the funnel and into the burette,” he instructed. “I’ll write down the procedure in the meantime.”

John began to do so, adamant to do it perfectly in order to prove to Sherlock that he wasn’t entirely useless—and hit his first roadblock halfway through.

He wasn’t _short_ by any means, but he wasn’t tall, either, and the burette suddenly seemed like the bloody Eiffel tower when he was trying to balance a funnel atop a skinny opening, stand on his tip-toes, and pour a steady stream of skin-corrosive chemical down said funnel, all at once.

He had poured about half the beaker when his hand wobbled precariously, solution splashing up the rim of the funnel.

“Fuck,” he hissed under his breath. His depth perception was shot to shit at this angle.

“Do you need help?” he heard Sherlock say, approaching him.

“Nope,” John said stubbornly. “I’m fine.” As if deliberately proving him wrong, his beaker gleefully tilted in the wrong way again.

Silently, a hand reached up and placed itself over John’s, redirecting the beaker to the right angle. A few seconds later, the burette was adequately filled to the fifty-millilitre marking, and the hand retreated.

“Thanks,” John muttered, face aflame. The place where Sherlock’s hand touched his felt too-hot; tingling. “I guess I did need help after all.”

“No worries,” Sherlock replied smoothly. “Do you want to perform the first titration?”

“Sure,” John said, and quickly back-pedalled. “If you’re okay with it, that is. I mean, if you wanted to go first I’d let you.”

The faint, amused smile that Sherlock gave him in response sent a hoard of butterflies aflutter in his stomach. “I offered first,” Sherlock said. “You go first.”

“Yeah, okay,” John said, a parade of phrases along the lines of _I’m so screwed_ frolicking about in his head. He haphazardly dropped the funnel into the sink, then returned to the burette. He placed a hand on the stopcock and began to turn.

Right before he could move, Sherlock’s hand came up to cover his again, stopping his motion. “You need to swirl the flask at the same time,” he explained.

Sherlock’s fingers were slender and pale. Violinist’s hands. He was first chair in orchestra. John knew this because he attended every single one of the school concerts where Sherlock had a solo, and stared himself into a trance as those fingers skated across strings like it was effortless.

“Oh,” John said. “I knew that.” (He did. Really.) “I just, um. Forgot.”

As Sherlock retracted his hand, John felt simultaneously relieved and disappointed. Borne out of a sheer desperation to get this bloody lab done and finished with so he could go back to absent, safe pining from a distance, John clasped the flask with his free hand and began to move it in fast, tight circles.

Sherlock placed his palm right on top of John’s hand, five firm lines of heat bleeding through. “Slower,” Sherlock said. “Or you’re going to splash it. Slow, smooth, and steady. Like this.” He guided John’s hand to move in a gentle, wave-like motion. “Now, turn. Remember: slow, smooth, and steady.”

Lips firmly pressed together to avoid anything utterly mortifying and completely inappropriate slipping out like _Your hands are really soft_ or _You smell really good_ or _Please go out with me_ , John readjusted his hold on the stopcock and yanked it in a jittery, jerky motion.

 _“Careful,”_ Sherlock said, and his voice was all of a sudden _inches_ from John’s ear, all low and rumbling heat, and John flinched so hard that his fingers clenched instinctively and he turned the stopcock all the way around. A flood of sodium carbonate solution shot down the burette and directly into the flask, immediately turning it a bright magenta.

John stared at it. “Fuck,” he said eloquently.

This was followed by a long pause, only punctuated by the background chatter of the rest of the students meandering their way through their own titrations. John was willing to bet money no one else screwed it up as much as he did. Fantastic. Now Sherlock thought he was awkward, forgetful, _and_ stupid. Fuck, maybe he _was_ all of those things.

His tirade of self-pity was abruptly cut short when he heard Sherlock make a small noise next to him. John couldn’t quite make out what it was at first. Then he did it again, a little louder this time, and John realized that he was _giggling._

Shocked, John turned to look at Sherlock, and his suspicions were confirmed when he was met with opalescent eyes bright with mirth, and a mouth cracked in an impish smile.

“What?” John said helplessly.

At that, Sherlock seemed to compose himself. Though his eyes still sparkled, his voice was steady. “John, that wasn’t very careful,” he said.

“What?” John protested. “It was your fault!”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “I don’t recall it being me who turned the stopcock completely open.”

“You distracted me!” John accused.

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, really!”

There was a glint in Sherlock’s eyes. “How?”

“I,” John said, and sputtered. “With your— _hands,_ and, and _voice,_ and I—oh Jesus Christ.”

Sherlock watched as John’s face slowly turned approximately the same colour as the solution in the flask. The corner of his mouth twitched.

John saw, and then realized. He pointed a finger at Sherlock. “You’re doing this on purpose!”

“Excellent hypothesis,” Sherlock said, and he was smiling. “So what if I am? What’s your conclusion?”

“Wait,” John said, suddenly quiet, his voice filled with a dawning realization and a shimmering, barely held-back hope. “No. Really?”

“Well,” Sherlock said, and shrugged. “I figured if I didn’t give you a nudge you’d spend the rest of the term staring at me and not saying a word.”

“You—I—oh, my—” John shook his head as if to shake the torrent of words in his throat into a more coherent order. “I can’t believe it. Seriously? I mean, really? Me? You would—with me?” Okay, so maybe they were still a bit tangled up.

“Yes, John,” Sherlock said, endlessly patient.

“Wait,” John said, “You know what I’m asking, right? You don’t think I’m asking about, like—being lab partners or something, right?”

That endless patience seemed to approach a slight deficit. Sherlock rolled his eyes, and reached out to take John’s hand. He intertwined their fingers together and held it between the two of them, squeezing tight and reassuring. “Do I have to do _everything,”_ he said. “John, would you like to go on a date with me?”

“Oh,” John said, feeling something like honeyed sunshine trickle down his spine. “Yeah, Sherlock. I’d love to.”

“Fantastic,” Sherlock murmured. “Now, let’s fix this titration before Mrs. Darcy fails us both.”

John glanced at the bright-purple solution in the flask, and then at his hand, tangled in Sherlock’s.

“Bugger that,” he said. “It’s formative anyways.”

Sherlock opened his mouth, but whatever he was about to say was interrupted as John leaned in and kissed him: slow, smooth, and steady.

**Author's Note:**

> Titration labs remain one of my most vivid memories. John's mishaps were all taken from personal experience, except I didn't have a Sherlock with me at the time. Lucky John.
> 
> I started writing this well past midnight and I'm posting this at five in the morning, which I think sums up my writing habits pretty well.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed! Kudos and comments give me life. Stay safe <3


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